


Patience Required

by mystiri1



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Community: one_character, Corporate Politics, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-12 23:58:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/130572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystiri1/pseuds/mystiri1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ShinRa was a company constantly at war with itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patience Required

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 07. Voice of Reason

Board meetings were an experience Sephiroth hated at the best of times, but with the annual budget review coming up, they were a hundred times worse. ShinRa was a company constantly at war with itself; it had no need for external enemies when the various departments would happily destroy each other given the chance – and no potential consequences. Backstabbing was standard business practice, but it was usually more subtle than this. This was where the knives came out.

The real issue was that ShinRa was, ostensibly, a power company. That meant that the departments not connected to that part of the business, or with only slim connections, had to justify their continued existence.

Sephiroth knew that SOLDIER and the regulars were relatively safe. ShinRa had the largest standing army in the world, and President ShinRa was unlikely to give up the sense of power and security that knowledge gave him. He could, however, be subjected to cutbacks, with troop numbers and equipment budgets reduced, which was not something he would willingly allow. He refused to send his men out with substandard equipment simply to save a few gil.

This was where his reputation helped. No real decisions would be made here – it was more a chance to curry favour with the President, and gain preferential treatment that way – but in front of a finance committee consisting of a panel of accountants. Intimidating a room full of glorified office-workers was not hard, and it helped that the President, too, was just a little afraid of him, even while treating him like some kind of prized dog.

Listening to Hojo’s latest mad idea was bad enough, given his past with the man. Palmer, whose Space Exploration programme had fallen out of favour after a failed launch, was full of whining and fawning and desperate attempts to gain some of that favour – and finance – back. But the worst of it was being forced to sit through Scarlet and Heidegger’s latest catfight; it made him wish he could bring his sword to the meetings with him.

More than once, he’d been tempted to try and be the voice of reason. Scarlet’s Weapons Research and Development had great relevance to his own, after all, and Heidegger, as the head of Public Safety Maintenance, was the civilian head of ShinRa’s military and therefore his own direct superior. Unfortunately, not only did he dislike them both, trying to interject any reason into one of their arguments was to draw their wrath. And not only was Heidegger his direct superior, Scarlet supplied his forces with weapons.

No, if anybody was likely to try and reason with either of them, it would be the head of Urban Development, Reeve Tuesti. The man was quite used to his own proposals being ignored or under-funded, and didn’t seem to bring quite the same sense of desperation to the meeting as a result. Scarlet and Heidegger both held him in contempt, and it seemed a little more did not bother him at all.

It would be easier to endure if this was more than a circus orchestrated at the president’s whim. In many ways, the company ran itself these days; President ShinRa spent more time screwing his secretary or his mistress than he did making any real contribution to the daily business of ShinRa Electric Power Company. So he reminded them of his power in other ways, and this was one of them. No matter how good their proposals were, how persuasive the logic behind their requests for funding, their entire budgets could be cut at his whim.

So Sephiroth sat at Heidegger’s left while the man leaned over the table and screamed at Scarlet, wishing silently for his sword.


End file.
